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Ease Loneliness With
Intergenerational Games

There are many reasons, stages of life and circumstances that can leave us feeling isolated and lonely. Being unable to be in the same place as loved ones. Not understanding the modern world. Barriers of mobility or impairments. Social anxiety and other mental health issues.

Video games are one way that we can reconnect with each other, without needing to be in the same place. Finding games to play online with grandparents and carers is not only a good way to keep in touch but a lot of fun.

The games on this page are part of the Better Health: Every Mind Matters Loneliness campaign, to help protect and improve the nation’s mental health and well-being. There are lots of practical tips and advice on the Every Mind Matters website. It's part of National Loneliness Awareness Week, which aims to reduce feelings of isolation by getting people to talk with friends or family safely online.


All the games have been selected to be easy to play for new gamers and many of them have been used in a broad range of cultural settings, being incorporated into Cathedral services, arts festivals, well-being retreats and educational contexts.

This list includes 137 games from the last 30 years, with 2,661 likes. They come from a range of different genres and play-styles and are all good games if you want to connect with grandparents.

DetailsList Details

PEGI Ratings: PEGI 3 to PEGI 16
ESRB Ratings: ESRB EVERYONE to ESRB MATURE 17+
Australian Ratings: G to MA 15+
Genres: Action, Adventure, Battle, Brain Game, Collecting, Communication, Creative, Fighting, Narrative, Physically Active, Platform, Point-and-Click, Puzzle, Race, Rhythm, Role-Play, Sequencing, Shooting, Simulation, Sports, Stealth, Strategy and Traversal
Total Likes: 2,661
 

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Release Date: 25/04/2020

Out Now: Switch

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person, Cartoon, Day and Night, Open World, Persistant World and Weather

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a role-play collecting game where you live on a small island teeming with life. Insects, fish, trees, vegetation and fossils are represented with cute cartoon visuals. Rather than the scale or grandeur of other game...

Journey

Release Date: 14/03/2012, updated in 2019

Out Now: PC, PS3, PS4 and iOS

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Open World

Journey is an adventure game set in a desert. Exploring the eerie sandscape, you discover a world abandoned by the race that created it. The sense of space and scale evokes feelings of aloneness and being lost. But then the game pairs you with other...

Abzu

Release Date: 02/11/2016, updated in 2018

Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person

Abzu is an adventure in a lush underwater world. You descend into the heart of the ocean to find ancient secrets and encounter majestic creatures. This combines the beautiful weightlessness of diving with an ancient story of finding meaning and your...

Dorfromantik

Release Date: 25/03/2021, updated in 2022

Out Now: PC and Switch

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Grid and Hand-Made

Dorfromantik is a peaceful village-building strategy puzzle game for one player, inspired by tile-based board games like Carcassonne. You have a stack of hexagonal tiles and work to match their edges while creating areas of towns, forests and fields to...

Hoa

Release Date: 24/08/2021

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Cartoon

Hoa is an adventure game where you walk and jump through a hand-painted world as the mysterious main character. You solve environmental puzzles and meet magical creatures while trying to find your way back home. It's unusual because of its handcrafted...

Knights And Bikes!

Release Date: 26/08/2019, updated in 2020

Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Hand-Made

Knights And Bikes! is a hand-painted adventure in a fictional late-eighties British Isles. You work together as Nessa and Demelza who explore its coast on bikes to find treasure, mystery and trouble. There’s fighting with frisbees, water balloons,...

Dordogne

Release Date: 13/06/2023

Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox X|S

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Hand-Made

Dordogne is a narrative adventure where you play as Mimi, a 32-year-old woman who returns to the house of her recently deceased grandmother. You explore the house and area to find letters and puzzles that bring back memories of the past.

Wilmot's Warehouse

Release Date: 29/08/2019

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On

Wilmot's Warehouse is a game for people who like to organise things. You are in charge of a warehouse and must manage 100s of items of stock. Identical square boxes are labelled with rudimentary icons. On your own or with another player, you must...

Wordle

Release Date: 20/12/2021

Out Now: Web

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Grid and Text

Wordle is a daily puzzle game where you (and anyone else playing that day) try and guess the secret word. You get six guesses that must be real words. Each letter is then coloured to provide clues: green for the right letter in the right place, yellow...

Hindsight

Release Date: 04/08/2022

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Hand-Made

Hindsight is a narrative point-and-click game where you revisit the past by finding objects that trigger memories. Play involves exploring each scene, locating objects and listening to the story as you move the camera to look within what you've found...

Ibb and Obb

Release Date: 01/08/2013, updated in 2020

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS3 and Switch

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Cartoon

Ibb and Obb is a puzzle game where you run, jump, land on enemies and solve momentum puzzles. The novelty is that it's a game designed for cooperation. One player controls the green creature, Ibb, and the other controls the pink creature, Obb. The world...

Tricky Towers

Release Date: 05/07/2016, updated in 2017

Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On

Tricky Towers is a battle puzzle that uses shapes but instead of creating lines, you must balance them in towers that mustn’t fall over. Real-world physics applies, along with wind and attacks from other players to make your stack topple. Up to four...

Book of Travels

Release Date: 30/08/2021

Out Now: Mac and PC

Components: 3D Third-Person, Hand-Made and Open World

Book of Travels is a role-playing game. It's an unusual online game that focuses on the small rather than the massive. You explore an open world to find others to travel with, gather resources, craft items and learn abilities. It's a game that invites...

Chessplosion

Release Date: 21/09/2021

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Grid

Chessplosion is an action, puzzle game where you drop chess pieces on a board to trigger bombs in the shape of their related chess moves. Your aim is to use the different pieces (and bomb attacks) to trap opponents like Bomberman. No prior chess...

Thirsty Suitors

Release Date: 02/11/2023

Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch and Xbox One

Components: 3D Third-Person

Thirsty Suitors is a narrative action game where you play Jala, back in her home town of Timber Hills to confront mistakes, make up with exes and reconcile cultural differences with her parents. Play involves talking to your parents and old friends,...

King Of The Castle

Release Date: 02/03/2023

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 12+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Cartoon

King Of The Castle is a narrative strategy game where you play a monarch battling nobles for power in a kingdom. The twist is that the nobles are controlled by other players who also have their own factions and objectives. You play by making decisions...

Pocket Card Jockey

Release Date: 05/05/2016, updated in 2023

Out Now: 3DS and 2DS, Apple TV, Mac and iOS

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On, Cards and Grid

Pocket Card Jockey is a horse racing game you participate in by playing a series of Solitaire card games. You race, breed and nurture a stable of horses for a range of owners, trainers and other interesting individuals. It stands out as both a brilliant...

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

Release Date: 04/08/2020

Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is a whacky obstacle race where up to 60 people compete to get to the end of the course and advance to the next round. Drawing on TV shows like Takeshi's Castle, Wipeout or It's a Knock Out, you have to control top-heavy...

A Little To The Left

Release Date: 01/08/2022, updated in 2022

Out Now: Mac, PC and Switch

Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Hand-Made

A Little To The Left is a puzzle game where you tidy a house into meticulous order. Each puzzle presents everyday objects and some evidence of how they should be organised. The challenge is you have to deal with a mischievous cat who likes to make a mess.

Bake 'n Switch

Release Date: 10/09/2020

Out Now: PC, PS4 and Switch

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Blocks and Cartoon

Bake 'n Switch is a puzzle fighting game where 2-4 players are apprentice bakers fighting the "Mould" and taking on various Guardian bosses. It's ridiculously cute and a lot of silly fun, as you catch, merge and sacrifice the anthropomorphised dough...

Sky Children of the Light

Release Date: 18/07/2019

Out Now: Android, Switch and iOS

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person, Cartoon and Open World

Sky Children of the Light (Sky Children of Light) is a huge open-world online game designed to create altruism between players. From the developer of Flower and Journey, it takes you on a social adventure in an ever-expanding world with up to 8 other...

Moonglow Bay

Release Date: 07/10/2021

Out Now: PC, Xbox One and Xbox X|S

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person, Blocks, Cartoon and Day and Night

Moonglow Bay is a role play game where you play a rookie angler. Unlike other slice-of-life games, fishing isn't tucked away as a side quest here, it's front and centre. Set along the Canadian coastline in the 1980's, you live in a fishing town that has...

FIFA (Series)

Release Date: 15/12/1993, updated in 2021

Out Now: 3DS and 2DS, Android, DS, Mac, Megadrive, PC, PS Vita, PS2, PS3, PS4, Stadia, Switch, Wii, Wii U, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox X|S and iOS

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, 3D Third-Person and Cards

FIFA is one of the two main football video games (the other being Pro Evolution). Each year it's released with improved visuals, more realistic physics and enhanced competitive play. For those that follow the game closely and play it a lot, it offers a...

Overcooked! All You Can Eat

Release Date: 07/08/2018, updated in 2018

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox X|S

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Grid

Overcooked! All You Can Eat is part of a series of collaborative cooking games for up to 4 players. You must keep talking to other players to coordinate the various elements of the dishes. It starts simply enough but soon gets more complicated as you...

Moving Out

Release Date: 29/04/2020

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Cartoon

Moving Out is an action-puzzle game where you play a removal company. With up to four players you work together to get items out of the house and into the van. Although this starts simply you soon find furniture that is an awkward shape or needs two...

Just Dance 2022 (Series)

Release Date: 17/11/2009, updated in 2020

Out Now: Android, PC, PS2, PS3, PS4, Stadia, Switch, Web, Wii, Wii U, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One and iOS

Skill Rating: 3+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On

Just Dance 2022 is part of a physically active rhythm game series. Dancing in front of each other isn’t something we often do in families. Just Dance is released with new songs and features each year. It gets parents, carers, children and even...

Horizon Chase 2 (Series)

Release Date: 20/08/2015, updated in 2022

Out Now: Android, Apple TV, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, iOS and iPhone, iPad

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Day and Night

Horizon Chase 2 is the latest game in the Horizon Chase series of arcade racing games with a focus on competitive fun rather than realism; its graphics make it look like it was plucked from the nineties’ arcades, with a nod to Outrun and Lotus Turbo...

Forever Ago

Release Date: Coming soon

Coming Soon: PC

Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon

Forever Ago is a narrative adventure where you embark on a road trip through beautiful places, capturing memories with your camera and making new friends. You explore forest lakes, dusty barrens and sweltering deserts, interacting with objects you find...

Lifeline

Release Date: 16/04/2015, updated in 2016

Out Now: Android, Mac, PC and iOS

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 3D First-Person and Text

Lifeline is a narrative adventure where you interact with an astronaut, Taylor via text messages. You help him return home after crashing his aircraft on a foreign planet.

Road to Guangdong

Release Date: 06/06/2019, updated in 2020

Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 3D First-Person

Road to Guangdong is a road trip adventure game about family and travel. You drive across 1990s Guangdong, fix your car and explore the places you pass. You play as Sunny, just after a family tragedy, travelling with Guu Ma, her aunt. They have the task...

The Garden Path

Release Date: Coming soon

Coming Soon: Mac, PC and Switch

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Cartoon and Open World

The Garden Path is a slice-of-life simulation game about the small pleasures of gardening. You tend to a world and make it your own through fishing, growing, trading and making new friends. As you do an adventure emerges.

Feather

Release Date: 05/04/2019

Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox X|S

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Open World

Feather is an adventure traversal game that brings you, as a bird, to a beautiful island. You can explore freely, collecting items and soaring on the breeze. Often, other players will join you to create a flock of birds to fly together, making music on...

LOCK (Dreams)

Release Date: 17/10/2020, updated in 2021

Out Now: PS4 and PS5

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 3D First-Person

LOCK is a puzzle game about escaping rooms. LOCK stands for Logic Operated Combination Keep, referring to a digital password protected door lock. You must discover secret four letter word clues by exploring each space, in order to unlock panels, collect...

The Longest Road on Earth

Release Date: 20/05/2021

Out Now: Android, PC and iOS

Components: 2D Side-On and Cartoon

The Longest Road on Earth is a narrative game of four chapters about everyday life. You play as different anthropomorphic animals living mundane lives. Its combination of minimal interaction and slow-paced stories aims to uncover moments in time that...

Ollie & Bollie: Outdoor Estate (Sokpop)

Release Date: 10/10/2018

Out Now: Mac and PC

Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Open World

Ollie & Bollie: Outdoor Estate is an adventure game in a simulated world. You help Ollie and Bollie, who are two bird-like people, look after their farm in the countryside by completing simple tasks. It may sound familiar but stands out because it gives...

The First Tree

Release Date: 11/10/2018

Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and iOS

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Open World

The First Tree is an exploration narrative game. In a dream, you explore a forest wilderness as a mother fox looking for her cubs. Simultaneously, you revisit childhood memories in spoken reflection from two lovers remembering the dream and their...

Ensamey (Dreams)

Release Date: 28/10/2021

Out Now: PS4 and PS5

Skill Rating: 4+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Hand-Made

Ensamey is a narrative game where you run and jump to explore a story told by a 4 year-old and their father. As the child tells the story, what they say and draw appears in the game for you to interact and play with.

The Forgotten City

Release Date: 28/07/2021

Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox X|S

Skill Rating: 13+ year-olds

Components: 3D First-Person and Open World

The Forgotten City is a mystery adventure. You explore and relive the final days of a cursed Roman city, where if one person sins, everyone dies. It starts as a bewildering array of characters, locations and information but over multiple goes your...

A Place for the Unwilling

Release Date: 25/07/2019

Out Now: Mac, PC and Stadia

Components: 2D Overhead and Open World

A Place for the Unwilling is a narrative adventure set in the final 21 days of a dying city. You investigate the city and its inhabitants to piece together what has happened. However, the clock is always ticking and the city carries on, with or without...

The Cost of Recovery

Release Date: Coming soon

Coming Soon: PC and Switch

Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon

The Cost of Recovery is a narrative adventure where you play as four different people, one of whom has a stroke. How this impacts each of them is experienced first-hand. Can they all get through this together or will everything start to fall apart?

Taming Gaming Book Written by parents for parents, the database complements the in-depth discussion about video game addiction, violence, spending and online safety in the Taming Gaming book. We are an editorially independent, free resource without adverts that is supported by partnerships.

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